With the continuing development of wireless communication technology, demand for expensive and limited licensed spectrum continues to rapidly increase, which has the potential to limit the usefulness of new wireless communication technology. In order to alleviate demand for licensed spectrum, operators may deploy Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) that operates on an unlicensed spectrum to bypass Long-Term Evolution (LTE) services, and reduce traffic over LTE.
At present, LTE and WLAN deployed by the same operator are generally two independently operated networks, and WLAN is often in a low utilization state. Accordingly, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has explored enhanced LTE-WLAN Aggregation (eLWA) to deeply integrate LTE and WLAN to facilitate dynamic load balancing between LTE and WLAN. For example, all data from the core network is transmitted to an LTE Evolved Node B (eNB) first, and the LTE eNB determines which data is transmitted to an eLWA compatible user equipment (UE) through the LTE eNB, and which data is transmitted to the eLWA UE through the WLAN Access Point (AP) based on a series of measurement results and pre-configurations. However, the rates at which data can be transmitted through the WLAN AP and the LTE eNB, respectively, are generally dramatically different (e.g., by at least an order of magnitude), which can create difficulties when attempting to simultaneously transmit information using both the WLAN AP and the LTE eNB. For example, if the LTE eNB attempts to transmit data to the eLWA UE at a rate that is lower than the rate at which the WLAN AP communicates with the UE, the full capabilities of the eLWA UE cannot be realized, as the eLWA UE could receive data at a higher rate if it were receiving it exclusively through the WLAN AP. As another example, if the LTE eNB attempts to transmit data to a UE at a rate that is higher than the rate at which the LTE eNB is configured to communicate with the UE, but the UE is not compatible with eLWA, some of the data that was sent via the WLAN AP or LTE connection may be lost if the UE is incapable of simultaneous communication over both connections. Accordingly, new rate configuration methods and devices are desirable.